California rally starts 'Summer of Service'

SAN FRANCISCO -- A wildly enthusiastic crowd of 1,47 cheering, dancing, fist-waving young people from around the country -- from Los Angeles to an Indian reservation to Baltimore -- launched President Clinton's "Summer of Service" program in an outdoor rally here yesterday, vowing to rebuild their communities and the nation.

Their spirit for improving the country was so strong that during the opening day ceremony at Treasure Island Naval Station, participants from the Harlem Freedom Schools Project broke into raucous chanting: "We're fired up! We can't take it anymore!"

"You better be fired up," responded Warren Furutani, a Los Angeles community activist who was addressing the group. "It won't be easy."

Michelle Loucas, 21, of Fallston, viewed the high-energy scene while sitting on the shoulders of Shanile Shakoor, 20, of Baltimore. "It's fantastic," she said. "We want to start a chain reaction to service."

After a week of training at Treasure Island, participants will return to work in their communities for eight weeks, in exchange for minimum wage and a $1,000 education voucher to be used toward tuition or to pay an education loan.

Summer of Service is a trial run of the president's ambitious national service initiative, which cleared two key committees in the House and Senate last week. Like Summer of Service, the national service program, which has not yet been funded, does not start new projects but is designed to channel workers into existing projects in their own communities.

Critics of the president's national service initiative have balked at its $379 million cost for the first year, in which 15,000 people of all ages would participate and receive up to $5,000 a year in education vouchers for their work.

By the fourth year, as many as 150,000 people would be enrolled in the program at a cost some estimate at $3.4 billion.